"It was strictly a personnel issue," said Goodin, who also noted there was no related criminal investigation against McKinney.

Efforts to reach McKinney through Shreveport police union president Michael Carter were unsuccessful.

Nearly a year ago, Shreveport resident Ola Mae Kelly sued McKinney and the city, claiming McKinney threw her to the ground and punched her in the face during an Aug. 16 encounter.

McKinney, in court papers, denied Kelly's claim saying the injuries she received were the result of resisting arrest.

McKinney had stopped Kelly on East 75th Street for violating a little known Shreveport law making it illegal to walk in the street if a sidewalk is provided. Kelly, who had two outstanding traffic violations, was arrested and taken to jail. She was released after paying a $490 bail.

A Times investigation of Kelly's arrest found the sidewalk law was almost exclusively enforced against black citizens and in black neighborhoods.

Almost half of all those arrested over the 5 ½ years of citation data studied by the newspaper were young men between the ages 17 and 25 — most of them black.